Intensifying the pressure, the Congress is refusing to allow the government to raise the legal limit on total federal borrowings, otherwise known as the debt ceiling.

This will reach a critical point later this week - Thursday US time, Friday Australian - when the US will run out of money to pay some of the interest due on its $US16.9 trillion ($17.86 trillion) of outstanding federal debt.

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Unless the Congress and White House can break the impasse by then, the US will default on those payments. The consequences?

American banks own $US1.85 trillion in federal debt, in the form of US government Treasury bonds. Those bonds are core collateral for the banking system. In default, they'd be rated as riskier by the financial markets and their value would fall. US banks would probably be thrown into crisis.

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''All the money you're gonna have is under your pillow, and it probably won't be worth as much as it is today,'' is the way Kyle Bass of Hayman Capital Management put it.

Foreign creditors to the US would become less willing to buy bonds in future. They would demand higher interest rates from the US to compensate for risk, so American interest rates would be forced up. This would probably mean the US would plunge into recession once again, and possibly worse: ''The devastation to the US would be so severe that it would take decades to recover from the Depression caused by a default and the attendant dumping of trillions of dollars of US Treasury securities on the global financial markets,'' says Dick Bove, a banking analyst for Rafferty Capital Markets, reported CNBC.

The consequences could be so serious there is a general assumption Congress and White House will find a compromise in time to stop default.

Washington, of course, is consumed by angry partisan blame. ''To a wondering world, the recriminations missed the point,'' editorialised Britain's The Economist magazine. ''When you are brawling on the edge of a cliff, the big question is not 'Who is right?', but 'What the hell are you doing on the edge of a cliff'?''

There are two big points here. One is that there is partisan blame to go around. The American public preponderantly is blaming the Republicans and their new small-government fundamentalism, driven by their Tea Party faction. The Gallup poll puts popular support for the Republicans at 28 per cent, the lowest on record.

And you can see why. A telltale is the fact America's big business lobby, traditional bankroller of the Republican Party, is reported to be reconsidering its support for a party that seems willing to risk economic vandalism in the name of political partisanship.

The second big point raised by The Economist is that this is not just about one party's behaviour.

It's also about a political culture that has allowed this sort of risk-taking to occur.

The Congress forced 17 government shutdowns in the years before the Clinton-era one of 1995-96. Since 1997, the Congress has never passed a normal government budget on time. Not once.

Responsible management of government was sacrificed to political gamesmanship long ago. Those crazy Americans. It couldn't happen here, right? Wrong.

The threat of government shutdown has been used effectively in Australia, and more often than you might think.

In 1975, the then opposition leader Malcolm Fraser threatened the Labor government of Gough Whitlam with shutdown a-la America. His aim was to force Labor from power.

Fraser used his numbers in the Senate to block passage of supply. The lyrics were different but the theme song was the same.

In Australia, the governor-general intervened to ensure continuity of funding for government but Fraser got his way. Shutdown didn't occur but it didn't have to. The threat was enough. Fraser was made caretaker prime minister and won the subsequent election.

There are examples from the state parliaments too. Constitutional scholar at Sydney University Anne Twomey says oppositions in Victoria's state parliament blocked supply in 1945 and 1952, obliging the state's governor to ask for the resignation of the premiers of the day.

Why don't oppositions in Canberra follow Fraser's example and threaten government shutdown as a routine pressure tactic? There is no constitutional or legal barrier.

''Before 1975, people were much more willing to play games with supply, especially in he early part of the 20th century,'' Twomey says. ''But 1975 so traumatised all players on all sides politically that it's seared into the brain of most politicians. It's made them reluctant to use supply to force their way into power.''

In other words, Australia's political culture changed after 1975. There's nothing automatic or God-given about Australia's relative political sanity. It's the expectations of the people and the behaviour of the politicians that stays the hand of oppositions impatient for power.